Wow, it has been over a year since my last review. It seems pretty fitting I would return with F9, given that I ended my last post with a mention of F5.

Warning: spoilers ahead. I do generally avoid spoilers with reviews, but it was difficult to stem my excitement over this one without providing context. The spoilers are not just for F9 but for the whole series. There is also a Fast and Furious countdown in the works for this blog. There seems to be a strong chance that this page will someday turn into a Fast and Furious shrine.

Another disclaimer: for ease of reading, all Fast and Furious movies will be referred to as F + their number in the series (ie 2 Fast 2 Furious would be F2), rather than their names, given that some of the names are rather confusing, such as Fast and Furious which is technically the fourth movie of the franchise, not to be confused with the actual first movie, which is The Fast and the Furious. Also, side note, check this out to see the absolutely amazing titles that Japan has given each movie.

All right, here we go.

From its inception in 2001, basically Point Break with cars, the Fast and Furious series has centered around family, both blood and found. There must exist some drinking game (involving Corona, of course) every time Dom (Vin Diesel) utters the word “family”. F9: The Fast Saga doesn’t disappoint in this respect, achieving some necessary course-correcting after a flawed F8 which suffered not only from a glut of CG-laden effects, but also what seemed a fundamental misunderstanding of the characters and their dynamics.
 
Most of that is thanks to director Justin Lin’s return, who previously helmed the series from Fast and the Furious 3: Tokyo Drift to F6. Although inevitably following the unspoken rule of action sequels having to be bigger and more...explosion-ey, Lin scales back (minutely) on the CG in favor of practical effects when possible. More importantly, he tries to earn F9’s action level-ups with emotional payoffs. Among these is the introduction of a new family member, Jakob (John Cena), Dom’s long-lost brother, and the return of Han (Sung Kang), a fan-favorite character. Often, however, F9’s desire to one-up itself chokes its own more human efforts, like when Han’s revival necessitates a convoluted backstory that does more to glaze eyes over than to bring tears to them.
 
F9 likely keeps up its frenetic pace to leave less time to ponder over its manifold plotholes. Everything screams that it’s more: more Nos, more utterances of family, more everything. We had a “God’s Eye” Macguffin in F7? How about a Macguffin that makes you the “god of everything” in F9? We have cars falling out of planes (F7) or racing submarines (F8)? How about strapping a car to a rocket so it can ram a satellite in space? It’s not until much later that we have the time to wonder, wait a minute...if they just needed to destroy the satellite, wasn’t there a better/easier way to do it? We see Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell) briefly before his plane crashes early in the film, but he’s never mentioned again. Is he presumed dead? Missing? Who even has time to keep it straight? In an extended gag, Roman (Tyrese Gibson) asks whether they’re invincible considering all of the preposterous stunts they pull, all while coming out “without a scratch.” It’s meant to be a funny wink at the audience, but it highlights how little sense these films make. It says something that one of the biggest laughs of the movie comes from Tej (Chris 'Ludacris' Bridges) assuring Roman that everything will be fine as long as they “follow the rules of physics”, which were left in the rearview mirror somewhere five movies ago.
 
And I know that talking about the Fast series executing some sort of logic is a shout into the void, but hear me out. As a devoted fan, I’ve never needed to understand the physics of F7’s Abu Dhabi Etihad Towers jump stunt or how Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) suddenly developed the skills to go fist to fist with a UFC fighter. Less is more, and as Tej succinctly explains when people question his extensive, seemingly newfound tech skills: “I had a life before you knew me.” However, once the characters strayed from their scrappy, from-the-streets vibe, and more to a superheroes with cars vibe, they suddenly became a lot more invulnerable. We cheered when Dom took a bullet to the shoulder in F4 and turned around to glare murder at the perpetrator, but now I suspect that bullets would just bounce off of his pecs. And the closer he gets to Superman, the less we care about the characters’ safety. In F7, when Brian (Paul Walker) sprints up the top of the bus as it’s sliding off a cliff, you feel much more anxious for him, heart in your throat, than when Dom drives off of another cliff, cool as a cucumber, in F9. Brian screeches at Dom in F7: "Dom, cars don't fly!", but no one would dare tell that to Dom now. The series has taken away one of the cardinal rules of action, as exemplified by Jackie Chan: if you survive, it has to hurt. Letty’s resurrection in F6 has more emotional impact because we aren’t expecting her return. But now that we’ve had Han resurrected and retconned twice, it lessens the impact of any death that might happen because it feels about as reversible as an Infinity Glove snap. F9 never gives us an instance where we’re worried that the world will end, the heroes won’t win, or that they’ll even get out of this with more than a few scratches. Rather than giving its characters more freedom, they’re now in the danger of becoming boring.
 
Because these characters are now seemingly invulnerable, they no longer have to think too far ahead about how to survive or outwit their enemies. F5 has the crew pulling a clever bait-and-switch heist to get out with their lives and their money, but now you have Dom sharing secrets in the open while his enemy sits five feet away. But what does that even matter when he can just pull a Samson-like move, bringing down scores of enemies with just his biceps? Much to the story’s detriment, the stakes prove as amorphous as their enemies now, including the faceless military goons of a fictional Central American country, or the ever-convenient threat of a device that can control the world’s security.
 
This is not to say though that F9 fails to entertain. The kinetic action never oversaturates to the point of dulling us to explosions. Even if we never fear for Letty’s life while she drives a motorbike over an exploding minefield, the scene still burgeons over with fun, which has become a necessary ingredient in the series. Lin knows exactly how to handle action sequences that range from straightforward to cleverly choreographed, and above all, are just fun to witness even if they make no sense at all. You can practically feel his glee at being back in the seat, concocting harebrained schemes for the characters to accomplish. Nothing storytelling-wise surprises the audience, but maybe we need something comforting as some of us return to the theaters. And there’s nothing more so than being able to join Dom and his crew as they gather for another victory BBQ in his backyard.
 
Reading an interview about putting women in the “front seat” of F9 initially made me leery of an Infinity Wars: Endgame-esque pandering scene, but Lin thankfully has more subtlety than a Marvel movie. Part of my misgiving was because the Fast series already had women like Giselle (Gal Gadot) to Letty, who exemplified their own strengths without calling attention to themselves. That’s why it’s especially frustrating when in F8, Dom feels the need to suddenly surge forward to defend Letty’s honor via a car race when she’s insulted by another man. Excuse me, Dom? Don’t you remember in the former movie, when Letty won a race at the Race Wars? Or when she drifted her car along the edge of a cliff to snatch Brian out of mid-air and certain death? How about her time as a mercenary driver in F6? Thankfully, Letty returns to form here, probably due in large part to her vocal calling out of F8. The very first scene we see of Dom in F1, outlines their relationship to a T. Everyone listens to Dom, and Dom listens to Letty. Ever since Brian's departure in F7, Letty is really the only one who is Dom's equal, who can pull him back from anything. And despite the fact that they're each other's ride-or-die, she has feelings and decisions independent of him.
 
Letty’s conversation with Mia (Jordana Brewster) in Tokyo acts as one of the important emotional anchors of the film. It emphasizes her own personhood, her feelings, as well as her relationship with Mia. This segues into one of the best fight scenes of the film. Whereas Mia has often been relegated to the sidelines in previous films, here we see her finally get her hands dirty. She hasn’t suddenly accrued impossible fighting skills, but her rough technique utilizes nearby pots with such relish that Rapunzel from Tangled would be proud.

Mia, along with Ramsey, are actually some of the more believable characters in a series where the team suddenly can't die. I don't know when the crew suddenly became expert snipers or able to take down a foreign military so easily. But Mia's fighting style actually makes sense, just like Ramsey's learning curve when she gets behind the wheel in F9. Ramsey's role is ever so welcome here, after being someone to be rescued or competed over. She's basically a prize in F7, and in F8, the writers clearly had no idea what to do with her and she primarily existed to finish sentences with Tej, who fulfilled much the same tech role as her. In F9, she's now behind the wheel, symbolizing her actual inclusion into the team whereas before she was always just behind a keyboard. At one point during her maniacal driving, Dom jumps into the passenger seat of the truck. And here, I have to admit I cringed, almost expecting him to take the wheel from her. That he doesn't is such a low bar to set, but we’ve admittedly come a million (quarter) miles from F3, which has a girl standing up before the first race to announce, “And the winner of this race...gets me.” This is the first Fast and Furious movie where we aren’t subjected to the routine montage of women’s butts and boobs during a street racing scene. Again, these are baby steps, but Lin’s certainly facing the right direction at least.
  
Unfortunately though, F9 criminally underutilizes Charlize Theron yet again in her return as super hacker villain Cipher. You can’t imagine my excitement when I first heard that Theron would be the main antagonist in F8 after reveling in her stint as Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road. But not only do we never see her behind the wheel, she spends almost all of F9’s running time in a glass prison as if she’s a super villain a la Magneto or Hannibal. Incredibly, she does even less than before, only simpering her lines as she bats her eyelashes and shows off her absurdly immaculate eye shadow. Theron could do so much more as Cipher, instead of just operating a drone from the safety of a bunker. At this point, the Fast series could honestly use a better villain, too, so this seems like a no-brainer.

Some mention here should be made about #justiceforhan, brought to larger attention by an article by Jen Yamato, which lamented the mistreatment of Han’s death in the series.

Han's presence is one of the only reasons why F3, for me, isn't at the bottom of my Fast ranking. Initially frustrated with a script that only featured Asians as villains, Lin pitched Han, and confused executives asked, “How do we make an Asian American dude cool? What does that mean?” Lin's answer in the character of Han Seoul-Oh, the consummate snacker who was cool without even trying, has forever cemented one of the Asian-American media icons, years before Steven Yeun made his debut as Glenn in Walking Dead. It's hard to pinpoint directly how vital his presence was in a landscape that so lacked similar Asian characters that served as role models. A hairdresser friend of mine confirmed that for years after Han's appearance, he had customers come in to request "the Han" to try and achieve that effortless, feathery mane.

It's not Han's death that's so egregious in the series, because it originally made a poetic sense for Lin to finish out his tenure as Fast director with the exit of Han. What made it such a travesty was that they killed him off, and then teamed up with his killer (Jason Statham as Deckard Shaw) after, never even addressing his crime. They spend all of F7 avenging his death by going after Shaw, and then in F8 they turn around to forgive Shaw, and ultimately invite him into the sacred space of the familial BBQ.

Han's return to the series in F9 makes absolutely no sense narrative-wise, and basically amounts to a hand wave, but this seems forgivable in the context of a movie that doesn't really make sense otherwise. More importantly though, it makes sense in the context of Lin righting a wrong in the Fast universe. We don't see in F9 exactly how this will all be course-corrected, although there is a hint that it will be addressed more fully in future films.

The Fast series’ sweet spot has always been when it embraces how ridiculous it is, while somehow remaining in the realm of possibility (as thin as that possibility is). F9 drives up right to that ridiculous line and then crosses the threshold of disbelief suspension, but it does signal a welcome return to form for the series: ludicrous stunts and down-to-earth conversations about how much the crew loves each other. It's reassuring to know that Lin is directing the next two films, which are apparently a two-part finale for the series. How are they going to top themselves after using Nos in space? Who even knows or cares. Just pop a Corona, and sit back to listen to Vin Diesel salute his family more times than he's ever said "I am Groot."

Apparently we can never tire of Jane Austen (all hail!). Her novels are still a fount of inspiration, and despite the timeworn tales of mismatched love and matched wits, her biting societal satire still feels fresh in Autumn de Wilde's latest adaptation Emma.

Although this is de Wilde's first feature film, she comes off a long stint as a photographer and music video director, and there's a little bit of that choreographic and artistic eye that comes through here, much to the strength of Austen's constricted setting. Colors pop in the scenery and wardrobe, making each frame as delectable as a sugary macaron. Servants move in tandem as if in a dance, but their promenading also emphasizes the sort of ease and aristocratic mechanism that Emma (Anya Taylor-Joy) takes for granted. She doesn't even look as she drops a bag to the side, knowing that a servant will be there to catch it. The opening scene has her navigate a lush greenhouse as she coyly but definitively orders a servant on which flowers to pick. It's in the early hours before there's much light, so of course there's another servant that follows her around with a lantern. It's the sort of privilege that comes as natural to her as breathing.

And that's one of the more refreshing aspects of this adaptation. de Wilde and Taylor-Joy don't shy away from Emma's privilege. She's rich, accomplished, and exceedingly entitled. And with that comes her arrogance, her pride, and her selfishness. Emma has the type of wealth that makes her blind to how much she depends on those "lesser" than her to function. She's decidedly not as likable as Austen's other heroines, and even Austen admitted of Emma that "I am going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like." Rather than lean on her charm or her wit, which she certainly has much of, this Emma is unarguably flawed.

Unlike other Austen heroines who have to contend with their lack of money or societal advantage, Emma is assured. She's not even interested in marriage...at least for herself. The film (and book) start with the conclusion of her matchmaking ending in a happy marriage. She is assured then that she has a skill for it, launching the capers that follow. Emma, of course, has neither the delicacy or the self-awareness to be a matchmaker. She is the type of person that doesn't care what people think of her because she's assured that everyone thinks well of her. She lets her friends make their own decisions only because she is certain she has influenced them toward the "right" decision. Furthermore, she is guided by her own ideas of class and character, as prejudiced as Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice, and certainly as meddling in her friend's romantic entanglements as he is, no matter how well-meaning they both are.

Yet that is what makes Taylor-Joy, and perennially Austen's heroine, so compelling. Emma certainly has room to grow, and while it takes a shattering moment for her to become self-aware of her arrogance, she has always meant well. At times de Wilde plays out Emma. like high school politics, with its hierarchical society and Emma's mean-girl tendencies. No wonder one of the best-known Emma adaptations is 1995's Clueless. It's the perfect setting for Emma rolling her eyes at the people beneath her or giggling with someone else about how gauche a hairstyle is. She's a veritable Queen Bee, the head cheerleader that has people flocking around her. She's also naive and, well, clueless.

It's Emma's love for others that helps her to grow. And not just a romantic love (one that plays out in an extremely well-shot, scintillatingly-reserved dance scene), but a love for her father (played by a hilarious Bill Nighy), and for her best friend (Mia Goth plays Harriet Smith in the film). The tweak that de Wilde and screenwriter Eleanor Catton (the 2013 Man Booker Prize Winner for The Luminaries) have put in is the emphasis on the friendship between Emma and Harriet, which is a large impetus for Emma's growth.

Emma. is a joy to watch and charming to behold. de Wilde plumbs scenes for laughs, allowing us to feel what the servants are secretly thinking in the peripheries of their "betters", and setting up gags in the beginning that will play out for a greater payoffs by the end. It's a lovely ensemble cast, with Nighy playing up his character's hypochondriac tendencies to the hilt and a winning Taylor-Joy to lead. The costumes are lovely as well, and de Wilde does well to emphasize what was contemporary to the time rather than what is palatable to our modern fashion sense. There are sculpted hairstyles, stiffened collars, and extreme colors, but it's all accurate to the time period. de Wilde, who has shot for several fashion magazines, carefully chooses colors of the background and sets Emma's clothes in harmony or discord with them, depending on the scene.

Austen's heroines remain refreshingly contemporary, and Emma is no exception. Although she has faults and grows as a character, Emma is never forced to conform in order to snag a husband. Her growth is entirely distinctive and for her self. Each of Austen's heroines' matches must meet the women at their level. There's never a Sandra Dee moment á la Grease where the woman transforms everything about herself to be accepted, thank god. de Wilde has been faithful in every way to the original, while providing a woman for the present. Perhaps it can also teach us to open our eyes to the entitlement we're unaware of in our lives, in the name of the people we love.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire is director Céline Sciamma's latest, a ravishing period piece that takes place in 1770s France. Each scene has the texture and color of an oil painting, not unlike the ones that Marianne (Noémie Merlant) does by trade. The film opens with her tempestuous boat ride to an island where she has to secretly paint a wedding portrait of Héloïse (Adèle Haenel). Héloïse is a reluctant bride-to-be and is unaware that Marianne is a painter, believing her to merely be a walk companion, so Marianne has to drink in the sight of Héloïse by day and then toil away at her painting by night. However, as Juliet once said, "I'll look to like if looking liking move" and almost inevitably, an undeniable attraction grows between the two.

Cinematographer Claire Mathon touches each scene like a painter herself, evoking the work of Jean-Baptiste Corot, who was a 19th century painter used as a reference for the film. Portrait varies from sparse, candlelit interiors, to the sway of the isolated landscape that surrounds the manor, yet Mathon doesn't rely on the light to lead the camera. Instead, the women themselves appear effused with their own light, like a painted portrait. There are moments you can almost touch the images, like in Marianne's nubbled rust dress, or the unforgiving stiff whisper of Héloïse's green one.

Sciamma plays with the idea of artist and muse, emphasizing instead the collaboration and meeting of intelligence between Marianne and Héloïse. It's the same sort of collaborative work that's on the fore here in her film -- a piece of art that is strengthened by the clear intelligence and skill of the actresses. It's a film that also subverts the so-called gendered gaze -- Marianne's piece is empty without Héloïse's spirit filling it. The women are equals here - their first moves toward each other are of their own will, and each glance is a give and take between the both of them. It's crucial for the film to work for Merlant and Haenel to be equals as well, and they both give powerful performances. The camera loves Héloïse, almost as much as Ingmar Bergman's camera loved Liv Ullman in Persona. It wants to unravel the mysteries of her face as much as Marianne does.

It's surprising to find that Portrait won Best Screenplay at Cannes, not because it makes such poignant use of silences (in a scoreless film, yet), but also because of how straightforward the dialogue is. It's refreshing in that it seems rare to find a queer romance where the characters never feel any shame, guilt, or doubt about their feelings. Portrait is simply about two women who fall in love with each other. The absence of a score highlights the few times we do hear music in the film, and each of those times is a jolt to the system; an opening of a sense we were unaware of.

Portrait actually bears several similarities to 2017's Call Me By Your Name, namely in the reverence of a memory or a love that isn't necessarily meant to last. It asks audience members to not regret, but to remember instead. While Oliver of Call Me By Your Name dreams of the whistle of a train that will eventually separate him from his love, Marianne is similarly haunted by the future's apparition, reminding her of the present's mortality.

That apparition, amongst a few other images, come off a little strongly at times in Portrait. It's a film that would do better with some restraint in those areas. Even without the third or fourth reminder of Orpheus, we can draw so much from the image of Marianne pursuing Héloïse, becoming familiar with the sight of her back. Sciamma doesn't seem confident in letting us find our own way, instead making sure that we know what that Orpheus imagery means, or what exactly was going on in Marianne's mind when she confessed to Héloïse that she has experienced love, or whether Marianne is sad or not thinking back on her memories. There's so much reward possible in allowing the imagery and the story to open itself to us, rather than have it explicitly reiterated.

Héloïse asks in the trailer, "Do all lovers feel they're inventing something?" And perhaps what she feels or what Sciamma depicts is not the most original or revelatory experience, but one that is beautiful in its shared moment. It's an experience that makes us all equals. Sciamma's film draws on influences as varied as Mulholland Drive and the powerful dynamics of women in Ingrid Bergman's work, but it is beautifully contemporary and lithe. From Marianne and Héloïse's first exchange of looks, where the camera allows a fluid give and take of their regard, they're found to be almost emerging from each other. It's a scene about their gazes, and Sciamma invites us in to be a part of that interplay with our own gaze.

Robert Eggers' sophomore film could be (and has been) sold as a black-and-white feature with Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson going head to head as lighthouse keepers. Judging from Eggers' ​The Witch, it's an almost sure bet that there will be some supernatural elements and some spectacularly spooky scenes. But other than that, audience members are given little else to go on before the film starts.

Dafoe and Pattinson play Thomas Wake and Ephraim Winslow, respectively, two nineteenth-century lighthouse keepers. Left alone for weeks on a mysterious island, resentments and hallucinations boil over in a cabin feveresque spiral. There's ample opportunity for Dafoe and Pattinson to chew the scenery, and Eggers roils us in every miserable bit of their sodden, cramped existences. The 1.19 aspect ratio makes the screen almost square, enhancing the claustrophobia we feel in their quarters and in their souls. When Winslow first climbs the stairs to their shared bedroom, he bonks his head on a ceiling, reminding us tactilely of that crampedness. The ratio with the harsh lighting hearkens The Lighthouse back to German silent film days.

The harsh lighting causes eerie shadows and sharp planes on the actors' faces, living as they do by the light of one burning bulb between them. It's likely the first movie you've seen with Pattinson where he won't look pasty. But the silent film vibes actually tend to remove us from the subject matter. Eggers has an eye for period detail, having even built and sewn all the clothes for The Witch. If he could, he'd probably jam Dafoe and Pattinson's hands into age-appropriate dirt to get the right look for the grime underneath their fingernails. Similar to The Witch, he pulls language and dialogue from the period, turning to nineteenth-century writers Herman Melville and Sarah Orne Jewett for inspiration. Although we can certainly appreciate his appreciation for veracity, the period-accurate language and heavy accents can be hard to decipher at times, and arguably take us more out of the film than into it.

The Lighthouse does the best when it's being uncompromisingly surreal. Eggers throws mythical allusions here and there, from sailor omens to Greek motifs. Wake and Winslow start to meld together in a weird way as they descend into kerosene-fumed madness and resentment. It's like a briny, machismo version of Persona, where two men are trapped with each other in the phallic symbol of the lighthouse. Wake is possessive of the lighthouse, calling it a "she" and not allowing Winslow take care of it. Some of The Lighthouse's prettiest scenes, free of grime and the weather lacerations are of the lighthouse itself and the power it exudes. Wake and Winslow's conversations mention other women from time to time, although Winslow certainly shows more than an implication of a sexual frustration outside of those mentions.

Eggers and cinematographer Jarin Blaschke used older Panavision lenses from the early twentieth century to achieve The Lighthouse's old-timey look. Although they used Kodak's Double-X film, they filtered it to create the orthochromatic look of old film, with a harsher contrast and grain. The Lighthouse is certainly awash in spectacular shots, ranging from the expertly framed to the bleak. But there's a remove from the film, much like watching an older silent film. Dafoe and Pattinson are excellent, snarling their way through their lines; Dafoe spews monologues as if Shakespeare were a peg-legged sea captain and Pattinson probably sweats and physically agonizes more here than all his other movies combined, but there's rarely a moment when you're not aware that they are Dafoe and Pattinson. There's a dream-like quality to much of the story with its surreal logic, but the repetitiveness wears and the film feels much longer than its runtime. It's an impressive film to look at, with numerous striking shots, but you're not left grasping much at the end. The Lighthouse is a film you end up wanting to like more than you actually do, but it's an admirable outing for Eggers all the same. However, it might be better to pass on its sailor slop and poorly cooked lobster to live deliciously and rewatch The Witch.

Director Bong Joon-ho returns to Korea for his latest, Palme d'Or-winning film Parasite and it's a masterpiece.  A departure from the wild escapades and expansive scope of his last two movies, Okja and Snowpiercer, Parasite is a more intimate affair.  A psychological thriller and scathing social satire, the story focuses on a poor Korean family that inveigles itself into the home of an upper-class, wealthy family and the events that ensue.  Bong directed and wrote the story, and there's a meticulousness to each frame that feels almost as if you're watching a play at times.  There's almost as much going on in the background as what's in focus, and the spacing is always carefully planned.  Parasite will invite multiple viewings to not only catch everything that happens on screen, but what the relationships of those physical and mental spaces mean.

Bong employs a 2.39 aspect ratio and the wideness of the screen is apparent from the opening shot of the Kim family's sub-basement apartment.  The Kim family crowds into every scene together, limbs squished together or tumbling from the frame.  Their closeness is mirrored by the cramped spaces of their home, all clutter and narrow hallways and junk spilling from rooms.  In sharp contrast, the rich Park family rarely shares space in a frame.  Their home, all modernist angles and simplicity has the sheen of a clean, wealthy facade -- the house is the former home of a well-known architect and it's both tastefully decorated and tastefully maintained.  There's scant opportunity for these two disparate classes to come in contact with each other, as Mrs. Park underlines with an offhand comment about how she can't even remember the last time she rode a subway.

One of the only intersections is the way that Ki-woo Kim (Woo-Sik Choi) first gets into the household -- introduced by a friend to be an English tutor to Da-hye Park.  He hasn't gone to university and he doesn't speak English very well, but it doesn't matter.  He comes from a family of hustlers and he's soon accepted with open arms and an open wallet by a trusting Mrs. Park (Yeo-Jung Jo), setting off a chain of events that Bong twists in careful and darkly madcap ways.

The style of their homes isn't the only difference between the houses.  Ki-woo has to ascend flights of stairs to leave his neighborhood, and even once past the front gate, the camera swings upward to emphasize his climb when he first visits the Park home.  Bong is a huge fan of director Ki-young Kim and his 1960 film The Housemaid, and nothing could spell that out more than the importance of stairs for him in the film.  Stairs have always been a sign of affluence for Koreans in homes, symbolizing their wealth and ability to afford a home with more than one floor.  Bong utilizes stairs visually but also features it in pivotal moments of the script, using it to show the struggles of the lower class to rise above their station to no avail.

Bong isn't shy to use metaphor, and when characters talk about how "metaphorical" an item is or how "serious" they're being, they're almost in parody of themselves.  The symbol of water and the gift of a rock are all interwoven into the story, but Bong's mastery is truly in Parasite's characters.  Despite villainous actions, he hasn't created any villains.  Each family quartet is sympathetic and fully realized.  Perhaps the Kims are seen to be the parasites at first, taking advantage of the rich Parks, but the Parks are no less so.  They feed on and utilize the Kims, dependent on them for their livelihood without even realizing how much they ignore and use the poorer to enable their status in life.  It's a story of impersonation, but not only of the members of the Kims as they try on the roles of the more fortunate, but also of the Parks.  They too pretend to take on characteristics of the lower class to get a kick out of it, whether in sexual roleplay or when eating commoner's noodles, albeit with sirloin steak added in.

Parasite balances dark humor with pathos as it races up to a second act and beyond.  Bong is stylish in narrative and visual flair, nudging the camera or our minds to go one way or the other.  Long-time collaborators actor Kang-ho Song and cinematographer Kyung-Pyo Hong add incredible nuance to the film.  The former is able to evince a building of emotions with a mere twitch of a muscle or hooded eyes, and Hong's use of light to contrast the two households is remarkable and subtle.  Hong has worked on some of the more well-known and beautiful films of the past years, including Burning, The Wailing, and Snowpiercer, and is yet able to create a new vocabulary to fit whatever film and whatever story he needs to service.  Parasite is both crisp and intimate, going from the dank subterranean depths of despair to the light-filled, sparse minimalist angles of the kind of wealth that doesn't need to talk about itself.

But the real wealth comes from the depths of Parasite's sympathy towards its characters.  The Parks may not be villains, but they don't understand the plight of the Kims, who struggle onwards and not without real effort or talent.  And despite their best intentions or desires, they're not able to rise above their station or change who they are.  Parasite speaks to the class disparity not only in Korea, but also in many other parts of the world.  And it speaks to the line that's drawn between them and the inability of change, although one may wish it was as simple as climbing a flight of stairs to emerge into a better position.

Contains spoilers and plot points for the following films: The Farewell and Midsommar

There's a brief point early in Lulu Wang's The Farewell where it's easy to imagine an alternate universe mash-up of this movie and Ocean's 8.  When Awkwafina, the dutiful granddaughter, assures her grandmother on the phone that she's wearing a hat to keep warm (she's not), she could easily be on the way to a park in Queens to work her next hustle.  The illusion is dispelled early on though, and it's Awkwafina's posture that does it.  In The Farewell, she moseys around with rounded shoulders and a permanent slump; this is not the swagger of a fingersmith who has the gall to lift Cate Blanchett's watch.  Billi (Awkwafina) is always dressed in a sort of inchoate sweatshirt fabric ensemble.  It immediately gives off the whiff of someone who both strives for comfort and who couldn't care less what impression she's giving because she has bigger worries on her mind.

And this is true -- Billi's grandmother, or Nai Nai (Shuzhen Zhao), has just been diagnosed with cancer and she doesn't have long to live.  What seems the wildest to Billi, however, is that Nai Nai is the only one who doesn't know.  Her extended family gathers in China to say goodbye under the guise of a family wedding, all the while keeping the secret under wraps.  In fact, they don't even want Billi to come, fearing that her lack of a poker face will give it all away.  It's not an unreasonable worry:  Billi's eyes brim over with mournfulness every time she looks at Nai Nai, as likely will the eyes of every audience member watching the movie.

It may sound like a crazy tradition to anyone unfamiliar with it, but it's apparently commonplace.  Doctors speak to relatives about diagnoses and keep the secret safe from the one with the disease.  The family comes from all over China, Japan, and the US to gather for the wedding/farewell, but Billi herself seems to have the most difficulty with the cover-up.  She urges her family members to reveal the truth, until she's set straight.  This is simply what is expected and it's not cruel or absurd:  Nai Nai herself hid the fact that her husband had cancer from him until near the end.  Chinese people have a saying: "it's not the cancer that kills them -- it's the fear."  The family takes on the burden of grief to protect the afflicted person.  In this, the group shares the pain of the knowledge for the individual.

The clash of cultural ideals is at the forefront of The Farewell, not just in its culture of grief but the overarching idea of the individual and its obligation to the group, or the reverse.  Billi's family is proud to have moved to America, but Billi herself is at sea.  Her wardrobe reflects her amorphous state -- she's too Chinese in America and not Chinese enough in China.  She mourns being uprooted at such a young age from China, unable to understand or recognize her homeland anymore.  Wang's handling of these emotional moments is patient and honest.  Her camera prefers unbroken takes of Billi's emotional monologues, while maintaining a safe physical distance.  The space in the frame allows us to constantly contextualize Billi, while emphasizing the actual distance she feels.

The Farewell careens between drama and the comedy of the lengths that the family goes to to keep the truth from Nai Nai, but Wang keeps it warm and genuine.  It's an ambitious feature:  the majority of the dialogue is in Mandarin, its hues are often pellucid blues, and most of it was shot in Wang's hometown.  Wang's concern is with authenticity, not what's marketable.  But even when the film reminds us that it is a film, like in a slo-mo scene near the end, it's more to signal the coming together, the sharing, of the family in that moment of what they have to do.

At one point in The Farewell, Billi remarks in disbelief that what they're doing is surely considered illegal in America.  This statement could probably be repeated a few times over in Ari Aster's Midsommar, another summer flick this year that dealt with culture clash and grief.

Reeling from a recent tragedy, Dani (Florence Pugh) ends up tagging along on her boyfriend Christian's (Jack Reynor) Swedish bro-trip.  The group visits and takes part in a famous mid-summer festival in a secluded, rural village that only happens every ninety years, which quickly takes horrific and bizarre turns.

Aster himself said that his follow-up to Hereditary was meant to be a break-up film, but it fails at making a compelling case as either that or a horror film.  Dani and Christian's relationship is pretty flimsy and mostly broken up to begin with.  Christian is an asshole from the start, and we're never certain what Dani's attraction to him is or was.  There's a bare expository phone call to a friend sketching it out (apparently involving a friend of Dani's that we never see or hear from again.  Does Dani even have any other friends?  It's unclear), but that's the extent of it.  Christian's behavior throughout borders on laughable, but the action that proves to be the final straw isn't completely in his hands.  He ends up so drugged up, we're not even sure how much agency he ultimately has.  It's clear that he wouldn't have needed much of a push, which makes this plot decision even more curious.  And there are those who might feel that what he did deserves the outcome: being paralyzed, stuffed into an actual bear suit, and burned alive...but that seems a bit harsh to me.

Midsommar​ makes a far more fascinating watch as a study on grief and ritual.  Almost all of the beats of the film are shown to us beforehand, either in mural or verbally.  Even the horrific opening scene is precluded by a picture of what is about to happen.  One member of Dani and Christian's group, Josh (William Jackson Harper), is actually studying the mid-summer festival as part of his thesis, and so remains the most unfazed at the first ritual that the group experiences.  The reactions to this ceremony, involving the two eldest members of the village, are fairly indicative.  Two British tourists are screaming at the sight, Josh's only admission the night before is something akin to "wait till you see it -- it'll ruin the experience if I tell you about it" as if he's talking about the ending of The Sixth Sense rather than a cult ceremony, Dani is shell-shocked, and Christian is doltishly aloof, assuring her later that he's certain that other cultures would consider American traditions with the elderly equally barbaric.  His response isn't really inclusive as much as it is dismissive of Dani's own feelings and trauma.

It's difficult to say if any of these is the correct response to a culture or tradition we're unfamiliar with.  Christian and Josh, after all, are only accepting as far as it benefits their own ends.  Dani is easily, by the film's last smile, the one who most assimilates into the pagan cult.  Appropriate because of the amount of grief she has already suffered by the time they arrive in the village.

But what does Midsommar say about grief or the tradition of the individual for the whole?  Certainly the individual is subservient to the community, as shown in their sacrificial and mating rituals.  And yet, the individual is not set apart from the community in their acts.  What is the most appealing to Dani is the sharing of their grief and action.  When Dani witnesses the betrayal of Christian, she breaks down and weeps, only to be joined by a group of women who weep and wail with her, sharing every bellow and sob.  When Pelle (Villhelm Blomgren), tells Dani that he knows how she feels, it is to make her feel less alone, and to assure her that he has also witnessed the death of his family in a horrific fire (which begs the question, of course, on exactly how many once-every-ninety-years rituals they participate in).  Not only that, he emphasizes how the community supported him and kept him from feeling lost.  The only way this makes sense is to realize that the village completely assumes responsibility for the pain they caused by sharing in it.  When the sacrifices burn at the end and cry out their pain, the whole village cries out in tandem with them, in a recognition and sharing of that grief.

Dani understands this.  Already she has taken part in a dancing ceremony, where she became one with the dance, causing her to completely understand the Swedish words thrown her way.  In her delirium, she finally understands what is being communicated because she becomes one with the people around her:  a part of the group.  It's not certain exactly how much her final decision is influenced by her feelings for Christian.  But as she weeps and wails along with everyone else, she is taking part in their culture of grief.  Her beatific smile at the end is the cherry on top.  She is no longer a part of a toxic relationship where she has to feel shame in sharing her pain; she is now a part of a community that wants to feel what she does.

I inevitably go through a film review and watching slump around the springtime.  It happens almost every year -- a combination of film fatigue and an excess of mediocre fare.  This year, the nail in the coffin may have been the latest Avengers movie (or maybe another superhero movie?  Or was it another Disney live action movie?)  So the next few reviews will be uncharacteristically late.  My apologies.

There's no better way to say it:  Olivia Wilde's directorial debut, Booksmart, is entirely winning and winsome, proving there's still some new luster to be had from an old graduation buddy comedy film.  Amy (Kaitlyn Dever) and Molly (Beanie Feldstein) have been friends forever and are about to graduate from high school.  They've buckled down and checked all the boxes to get into the best schools.  But on the eve of graduation, Molly finds that maybe they didn't actually check all the right boxes.  Their classmates are headed to the same prestigious futures, proving that they worked hard just as much as they played hard.  In a last-ditch effort to have it all, the two embark on an all-night quest to participate in the greatest party of all time.

Dever and Feldstein are gems, never flagging in their portrayal as supportive friends.  Nothing would make me happier than to see the two of them collaborate again in other roles like another Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly pair or Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.  Booksmart deftly navigates the usual "search of an epic party" trope, turning it instead into a friendship odyssey, complete with a mysterious oracle-like figure (a hilarious Billie Lourd) that keeps popping up to guide their journey, a lotus-eating drug scene, and scenes of such surpassing strangeness they only make sense in the context of a teen film. 

Yet despite these exotic scenes, the story and emotions are familiar.  It's a tumultuous time of our lives where we keenly feel emotions even when we rollercoaster from our highs to our lows in minutes.  It's also all-consuming, disorienting, and egocentric.  Wilde captures all of this perfectly, from the slo-mo scenes of Molly's disbelief in the school hallways, to the poignant beauty of the light-filled pool scenes that catches those effervescent moments we'll never capture again if we're not there to seize them, to the steadicam daze that follows when Amy leaves that pool.  It's a confident handling of material that belies the fact that this is Wilde's debut and the uncertainty of the subject matter.

Amy and Molly are each other's "person".  They are that person in your youth who knows you better than your parents do, maybe better than you yourself do.  But through the course of their night, they find out more about each other and their classmates: always proving that there is more to a person than meets the eye.  One person doesn't have to belong to simply one Hogwarts House; teenagers are more complex than that, despite what your average highschool flick will tell you.  Appropriately, Booksmart proves that the average highschool flick doesn't have to be average at all.  I'm thankful that smart, relevant movies are being made that belie mediocrity or the idea that we have to settle for anything less.  Booksmart is funny, affirming, and a delight on all fronts -- Wilde has knocked it out of the park and inaugurated a promising directing career.

With writer-director Christian Petzold, much of what he gives you is right up front, as in his sometimes too on-the-nose (albeit beautiful) film titled ​Phoenix.  That much remains the same in his latest film Transit, which is the third of his loosely related trilogy "Love in the Time of Oppressive Systems".  As its title suggests, it not only deals with the characters who are searching for literal transits out of their situation, but also the limbo they find themselves in.

Georg (Franz Rogowski) is one such character who is trying to escape the encroaching fascist regime.  What year it is is also a surprisingly opaque detail.  It feels like 1940s Germany, but there are no swastikas, and the dress and transportation seem fairly modern.  Although based on a 1944 book by Anna Seghers, Petzold strips the movie of any period clues, leaving us in another sort of purgatory that brings the narrative closer to us.  One woman points after a fleeing Georg at one point, for all the world sounding like an informant yelling after a Jew.  And yet at another, Georg connects with a North African immigrant and her son.

Georg impersonates a dead man in order to obtain a visa and papers to flee Europe, but with that come all sorts of entanglements with other refugees, including Marie (Paula Beers), who is that dead man's wife and searches for him, ignorant that he has passed away.

Transit has a framing device of a narrative within a narrative that is jarring at times, but then only adds to the surrealism of the story.  What we're narrated verbally isn't always met with what actually happens before our eyes.  It also immediately enforces a distance from the characters that is echoed by the distance from the action which induces shame in the bystanders of the story.  There's a skewed logic at times in the ways characters act, as if they are party to the whims of a writer.  But again, this only underscores the tragedy of the skewed logic of oppression that is all too real.

Petzold has always given the impression of a Hitchcockian noir filmed in the present, with crisp colors as well as shadows.  It's a style that's evocative of the old suspense master while being completely now.  Marie flits like a ghost through each scene, haloed with importance even before she's introduced into the story like a soft surround of Kim Novak.  And yet, the range of colors achieved by cinematographer Hans Fromm is thoroughly modern, from the blues of the night train travel, to the hues of late French cafes, and the baking sun of Marseille.

Transit perfectly evokes the purgatoric in-betweenness of its characters and their situations, unable to shed their past to embrace their future.  Georg is time and time again driven by his guilt, trying to assuage it, even as he becomes more than a simple bystander who only wants to survive.  However, Petzold reminds us that the only way to change our narrative is to remember our past and learn from it.  The future determines as much of the past as the reverse, or as one character puts it:  "Who forgets first?  The abandoned one or the one who left him?"  Perhaps it is whoever moves on first.

Ash is the Purest White, the latest from Jia Zhangke (Mountains May Depart, Touch of Sin), could stand as a bravura showcase of Zhao Tao who plays the protagonist Qiao throughout the years, immutable as China radically changes all around her in this epic that spans 17 years.

The film starts with Guo Bin (Liao Fan), a local crime boss, and his girlfriend Qiao who epitomize the kind of gangster cool a la John Woo and Chow Yun-Fat.  And although Qiao starts the story firmly claiming to be outside of the criminal underworld her partner overlooks, she finds herself holding on to its tenets after everything else has moved on.  Qiao aloofly expresses disinterest in ballroom dancing, claiming that she's not into Western culture even though she's just come off of the floor joyfully dancing to "YMCA".  But during that joyful romp with her boyfriend, he drops his gun onto the floor and they both stare at it dumbfoundedly for a beat before she gets back into dancing with him again, adjusting to the shock.

The skill to adjust comes to the fore when years later, Qiao leaves prison to find China almost unrecognizable and her relationship with Bin equally so.

In one pivotal scene, Qiao and Bin discuss a dormant volcano and ask how they can know its potency if it hasn't stirred in years.  Qiao is that volcano of the film, purified by trial, and evincing a strength that never has to erupt to make itself known.  Her facial expressions and feelings are masterfully revealed (or held in check), and Jia keeps the camera lens often at a distance.  Her anguish, frustrations, and sadness simmer at that space.  They're often ripples in a calm facade that are easily missed if you're not paying attention.  Bin is certainly unable to perceive her, to adapt, or to conquer his pride...something that gets in the way of understanding the significance when they both return to the spot that overlooks the same volcano years later.

Qiao holds herself to a moral code, the code of the underworld, long after it's been disavowed and forgotten by the surrounding country.  Ash is the Purest White is as much about Qiao's endurance through the radical transformation of China as it is about her changing relationship with Bin.  Ash takes place over three progressive time chunks, with cinematographer Eric Gautier using different media for each period to highlight the passing of time.  The first goes from DV to 4K, emphasizing the pop of colors, which comes to the fore at the climax of that period during an almost sublime fight scene.  The second is shot on 35 mm, with a sort of grain and grace that mirrors Qiao's journey and maturity.  Even the sickly neon green in a motel scene is muted, lacking the same vitality of color as before.  And the final is shot in digital 5-6K, almost washed out of color, even as it's framed by a reminder of the present and future with its high-speed trains and security cameras.

Jia's film is one of both a grand and intimate scale.  He's always reminding us of China's wanton path of progress that pushes people from their homes because of a mine being overtaken or a new dam being built, but he frames it in Qiao's devastating journey as she tries to find herself after something much more personal displaces her.  It takes a phenomenal actress to direct attention in that way even in such a demanding setting, and Zhao does it all without gaudy theatrics.  Instead, her performance makes us feel keenly for her even if she only gives a scoff to the side or a slight twitch of the eyes.  Like Zhao, Jia's performance is neither heavyhanded nor aphoristic.  Instead, it gently reminds us of what we lose in changing times and of the impossibility of going back to our homes.

Jordan Peele's Us is either a cinematic achievement or a sophomoric slump, depending on who you talk to.  Unfortunately, his film's intent also seems to vary depending on whoever you happen to discuss it with.  I've heard all sorts of convoluted theories, and although a close watching (and rewatching) may reveal the actual answer, Us is not as tight as his debut Get Out.

Adelaide Wilson (Lupita Nyong'o) plays the matriarch of the Wilson family.  They're fairly well-off and fairly average.  The father (Winston Duke) went to Howard, they have one son (Evan Alex) and one daughter (Shahadi Wright Joseph) who bicker reassuringly, and they're currently vacationing in their family cabin in Santa Cruz.  However, after a frightening encounter at the beach, Adelaide is beset by all sorts of forebodings which come to fruition that night when they are visited by another family of four who have their faces.

Us is rife with allusions, from the opening scene that zooms in on a smattering of VHS tapes framing a television set that plays a Reagan Era commercial.  And it's that language, as well as the carefully selected music pieces, that inform the film.  In many ways, it relies on our knowledge of tropes to build its unease.  The Jaws t-shirt that the son Jason wears is there to build our wariness of danger at beaches and the Thriller shirt that the girl wears in the opening scenes reminds us of horrific transformation and things that go bump in the night.  The C.H.U.D. VHS tape is a reference to both the plight of the homeless and subterranean terrors.  There's a white rabbit that leads the way to a topsy-turvy world and there are even a set of twins, which are both a reference to The Shining and to the duality that is a theme throughout Us.  But while all of these are carefully chosen and alluded to, if a viewer goes in blind, there is a lack of other scares, tensions, or frights cinematically.  A horror film needs more than a few scrapes of violin strings.  Furthermore, a working knowledge of horror films also should mean that its characters are more aware rather than succumbing to the usual ceaseless stupidity that accompanies such fare.  At this point, it's a disservice to Peele as a director and writer and to the audience that any of these should be used as a crutch.

The fright in Peele's film comes from the unknown within the known.  When the father, Gabe, asks the doppleganger family "Who are you people?", the answer in a dry, rasping voice is "We're Americans."  The line is there for laughs, but for Peele it is very literal.  Americans are afraid of the "other", but they're also afraid of themselves.  Not necessarily for individual sins, but for a collective consciousness and guilt that they're not taking responsibility for.  In Us, the characters are directly responsible for the lives of their others, whether they realize it or not, and then their worst fear is manifested when those shadow selves rise up.  Whatever that means for the average viewer (or the average American) -- poverty, homelessness, the current political climate, global warming-- perhaps Peele is getting more at our lack of public and social responsibility for the monsters we create rather than a specific issue.  The Reagan "Hands Across America Initiative" ad is an example of a sort of action that didn't end up meaning very much at all other than imbuing a sense of patriotism and what an American is--the sort of action where taking part was more of a show than an actual effort.

It's admittedly a broad (possible) explanation, but that is emblematic of the rather broad problems of the film.  It overexplains at some points, but the overexplanation only leads to more plotholes.  Us would have done better by scaling back on the reveal and allowing more strangeness, or for going all in for the social commentary.  The commentary as it is can only be theoretical, since there isn't a ton to back up any theory that anyone comes up with.  The obvious answer, given the Reagan ad in the beginning, would be that Peele is talking about the plight of the homeless and the have-nots, who are trapped and without opportunity to better themselves.  But it doesn't necessarily deliver.  Because Us​ wavers in a weird in-between where the style of the film has more sheen than the underlying story, it ultimately fails.

The style is admittedly gorgeous.  It Follows cinematographer Mike Gioulakis creates some gorgeous carnival scenes, bringing to mind the lights and pop of the vintagey decade of the other horror movie.  The colors are especially vibrant throughout, able to slice through the literal and figurative darkness of the film.  Lupita Nyong'o is even more so, able to completely convince us that her character and her doppleganger are completely different people.  She makes the movie frightening, with her vocal lisps and balletic movements.  Her character is the most fleshed out, with emotion and a closeness that comes from a well-rounded writing of her, so we end up caring far more about her than any other character in the story.  The other members of the family are more of a brief outline of the familial roles.  Furthermore, the editing of their lines and their rapport is strangely stilted at times, ruining the timing that's so important to both comedic and horror films.

Us has some good ideas and even better directing, but in the end it doesn't come together.  It doesn't work as either a fable or a scary movie, mainly because of that lack of cohesion.  It often confuses and it doesn't succeed in making us ask the right questions.  However, there are many good reasons to see it, and it has the unfortunate denigration of seeming poorer only because it comes after Peele's standout Get Out, which had a tighter vision.  Nevertheless, I'm excited to see what he comes up with next; there are nuggets of greatness in the film, and not only because he alludes to previous classics.